With Robert Gates saying goodbye to the position of secretary of defense, many officials across the country are saluting him for a job well done.

To others though, the legacy that Gates has left behind is far from as pretty of a picture that his admirers have painted.

To Michael Prysner, a war veteran and activist, the legacy that Gates leaves behind him “is one of just another millionaire that from the board rooms of Big Oil” that “sent over two million young people . . . to fight wars that benefit only Wall Street and Big Oil.”

With six countries being bombed and he says bye-bye to the DoD, Prysner says that the legacy left by Gates is one of thousands of dead, and if he wants to take a look at what he’ll be remembered for, “he should spend just one day with a grieving family . . . that has lost a loved one in his war for profit.”

Progressive Radio News Host Stephen Lendman thinks that Gates’ departure won’t mean a change in military politics for the US. While the Pentagon says we are on our ways out of Afghanistan, Lendman asks Americans to take a look at the 700 bases we have built there over the last few years. “We didn’t build these bases to leave them,” he says. He says to take a look back at the end of World War 2, and realize that the US is still in Germany, Japan, Korea and Italy. The presence of Washington, he says, “has expanded all over the world.”

While the White House and Pentagon might say that wars are nearing their end, Prysner says that these wars were never even a war of the people that are fighting them. “These are wars for empire, but not out empire — the empire of Big Business, the empire of Wall Street,” he says.

These wars will rage on, says Lendman, who says that as the system stays the same, the wars will go on.

“When it comes to war and peace,” he says, “America has a permanent war agenda.”